


The Sword of Heaven

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [8]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - The Reichenbach Fall, Canonical Character Death, Crack Treated Seriously, Dreamsharing, M/M, Reincarnation, Shakespearean style language, Swordfighting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-26
Updated: 2015-03-26
Packaged: 2018-03-19 16:33:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3616677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Moriarty and Moran escape and abduct Mycroft Holmes while they're at it. Moriarty's plan? To trap Sherlock and John because he wants to meet those other two men, the Richard and Khan he accidentally awoke. He's a mad genius, is Moriarty, but he has no idea who he has unleashed, and what they'll do to protect each other. But how will that protection unfold, since they have promised one another to be better men than they were? An unsought sword fight will determine all their fates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sword of Heaven

**Author's Note:**

> I have been meaning to turn these notes into a story for months now, and so with the uncovering of historical Richard's body and his recent reinterment, I was inspired to write this story of Shakespeare's Richard and his passionate, reciprocated love for Khan. These two bad men died badly indeed, and then became Reincarnated Homicidal Dream Boyfriends. It's weird, I know, but it's so much fun!
> 
> (And yes, there will be more stories as inspiration strikes. I can't help it. I LOVE writing their dynamic!)

It was cold in the glade. Richard’s skin prickled with it, with the knowledge that this place, both sacred and profane in the love it sheltered, had lost its warmth, and thus with it the comfort of its sheltered love. There was an emptiness in this, their sanctuary, that chilled his heart, for his heart had no defences here, in this place where he had opened that vulnerable and wounded part to the only one who had ever cherished it.

Richard had never wanted for courage, but the chill where there should only be delight alarmed him. He did not want to part his eyelids, to lift the curtain that shewed darkness to him, for fear that there was no light without.

“Khan!”

His voice was yet strong and commanding and rang out from his lungs. The world beyond his closed lids swallowed the sound, like a shroud absorbing the cries of the grieving.

The analogy filled him with dread.

“Khan! Sherlock? Where art thou?”

No reply and so, perforce, Richard must brave the terror of knowing for certain that which he feared, and look upon an empty world.

The gold-flecked blue eyes of the erstwhile king opened, to find darkness replaced with pearlescent fog, no less obscuring than the perfidious night.

His heart thundered in his chest and that stranger, fear, came crowding close to his ear and whispered, “He is dead. Your beloved is dead and is no more. You deserved him not and thus have him not.”

And Richard’s lip curled and he hissed his words aloud into the invisible countenance of that taunting fear. “Pestilence on thee, faint-heart. If my love has left me, twas not his will and I will follow him hence as swift as I may. And yet his absence is not for certain the herald of his death. I will seek truth before I seek his soul in the afterlife. Has he not said in his waking self that ‘tis folly to theorise without data?”

Thus, fierce Richard grit his teeth and searched his mind for data, and also thus, he found a memory not rightly his, but belonging to his waking self, that John Watson who so cleaved to the beloved Sherlock/Khan.

A memory of a message that Moriarty and Moran were undertaking transfer to a new facility for more stringent questioning. A communication from the stiff-necked brother in all but panic that, for all the precautions, the guarding car in front and that behind were both engulfed by fire, and this centre carriage, containing enemies and his own close-guarded self, had fallen to treachery. Bodyguard dead, carriage drivers, dead. Ruin at hand and abduction soon upon him. The communication ended with the mocking laughter of a madman, and afterwards… silence.

And thence the search – Sherlock and John frantic and ferocious in their investigations, seeking their own path to the viper’s nest.

This way they learned that some external agent had threatened the family of a now-immolated driver, so far as to send the pretty digits of a babe as promise of more pieces to come, should he fail in his betrayal. Richard knew the technique well, having employed such brutal encouragements when he himself was a mad and bloody tyrant.

Richard’s mind’s eye gave him the heart-splitting last act of the drama: the ambush in that antiquarian museum, full of tablets and statues from the Holy Land that were old even in the time of Richard. Sherlock was hampered still by his cane and limp from the wretched Moran’s attempt on his life. They had fought like lion and hawk, John and Sherlock, but the treachery was not ended. Smoke in the air that was not smoke choked breathing from them both, Sherlock/Khan stumbling and falling in the cloud while John/Richard, gagging, reached still and always for he whom he loved before all things else.

“Khan!” Richard cried again in to the fog that pressed like death upon his nose and mouth, “Sherlock!”

Weeping with his helplessness, snarling his rage, Richard breathed in the poison and screamed it out again as though possessed.

“ _KHAAAAAAN_!”

*

A sting in his neck jerked him awake from the dream.

John Watson’s body stirred, but it was his older self behind those eyes as he woke. He strained to see where he was. Not the glade, that was obvious, and the fog had cleared.

Instead, he was folded on the bare floor of a cavernous room that smelled of mildew and the nests that birds, badgers, rats and flies had made all through the ruin of the hall. It seemed he knew the place, or had known it once, though briefly, when it was grand and full of voices. Was this ruined hall in Leicester, where once he had been Duke? He had once thought to miss these lands, but they had never kept any hold on his heart. His home solely resided in the heart of his love, that four-chambered state, his only principality.

Richard raised his head and saw that nearby was a stranger, bound upright against a tree that grew through wood and stone and tile.

No. Not a stranger. The man was the timorous brother in this life of his beloved Khan’s waking Sherlock self. That Mycroft, who so feared passion he would, as a walled castle, present a warlike face to the world, permitting no trespass, and kept his own heart chained and gated like a traitor in some deep dungeon, lest it brave the world for love and be thus undone. 

Richard did not much like Mycroft Holmes, though he respected his cunning. Yet his cunning was not sly enough for such a devil as James Moriarty, to be brought to such a pass. 

Richard blinked at Mycroft and Mycroft, his eye and cheek as black as a Moor, looked upon him with disdain. “You weren’t supposed to be _caught_ ,” he said with disappointment and disgust.

“Where is Sherlock?” Richard rasped, remembering to use the name that Mycroft knew.

Mycroft closed his eyes and shuddered. Perhaps he was not quite so passionless, though his love be all for his brother. Richard could not fault him for that, for who better to love than his own dear Khan? 

“Never fear, brother’s here!” came a singsong voice that scraped upon the former king’s spine, dancing murderous rage along each separate nerve, until his fingers twitched, even those of his useless right arm, with the wish to visit pain upon the speaker.

He and Mycroft glared together as Sherlock, barely conscious, was dragged into the desolation of the hall and left to tumble down between brother and beloved, like a rag. He was unbloodied, unbruised, but terribly pale. His walking stick was gone or, rather, had been left beside the cold hearth, whose stones were broken and whose chimney was the refuge of a nest of starlings. Mycroft’s umbrella was likewise by the hearth, and whether Moriarty knew its deadly secret, Richard could not tell.

Mycroft could not take his eyes from his brother’s haggard face, and so it fell to Richard to look upon their enemy.

“I tried to wake the other one up,” Moriarty explained, “But all I got was Sherlock. Your turn. How are you feeling, little cripple? I do have the little cripple, don’t I? Oh do tell me Seb woke up the right one.”

“Thou maggot,” snarled Richard, “Thou yellow-spleened, hog-breath’d, rot-ball’d, mewling dog. Any hurt you gave him will be repaid.”

“And there you are,” crowed Moriarty, happily, “Good work, Seb.”

The o’erpraised Seb Moran stepped into view, tossing the syringe aside. “I’d like to take credit, Jim, love, but he seemed eager to pop out to play.”

“Is that it, hunchback? Do you want to play with me?”

“Aye,” said Richard, pushing himself to his feet, “I’ll play a while with thee, devil.”

“No.” A feeble gasp, and Richard turned his head to see his love’s pale winter eyes looking upon him. At first he did not see whether ‘twas John’s beloved Sherlock or his own beloved Khan looking out at him, and did not know which of them he wished to see. The two were bound in one, as he was bound in John, and the loss and hurt to either was a torment to consider.

Mycroft strained in his bonds to free himself, but he was no master of that art, unlike the warrior slumped between them. “Sherlock,” Mycroft implored.

“Don’t kill him,” was all his beloved said, looking at Richard, “We promised a third way.”

“Except in thy immediate defence,” said Richard darkly, “Or mine own.”

He felt Mycroft look at him, the elder brother at last hearing the cadence of another voice, but it was of no matter. For Richard now had other troubles of more urgent consequence.

Moriarty, the mad dog, had taken up the brother’s umbrella and turned its handle, and so unsheathed a deadly blade.

“Are you watching, Sherlock?” said Moriarty with a voice as dead as battlefield mud, “You’d better be. I want to talk to the other one, and I know just what will make him come out to play. Say goodbye to your crazy little cripple.” And he lunged.

Richard had been many things in many lives. He had been a king and a slave; he had been a doctor and a fisherman; he had been a painter and a clown. But in none of his lives had he ever been a coward. In all of his lives he had been fast and stubborn and aye, even with a twisted back and an arm that would not obey a thought, he was not at anybody’s mercy.

Moriarty lunged at him with the unsheathed rapier, but though he moved as fencers do, he had not learned the art of it from boyhood. Not as Richard Plantagent, son of a Duke, and Duke himself before a King, had done, trained in youth by the Kingmaker himself, Neville, the Earl of Warwick, and blooded in fierce battle in France and in Scotland before the civil wars of England won him a hollow crown.

The body he lived in now was no less a seasoned fighter. 

As Moriarty lunged, Richard rose to his feet and darted, fleet as Hermes, across the divide to the empty hearth. There, he snatched up Sherlock’s abandoned cane and swiftly brought the body of it up to hold bitingly between his teeth. 

Moriarty whirled to face him, then grinned and waved Sebastian, who had started towards him, down. “He's mine, Seb. Touch him and I'll cut off your hand.”

Moran, not doubting the threat for a moment, stood down.

Richard held the cane in his teeth and made short work of stuffing the arm that could not remember how to move into his waistband, penned close to his body for better control of his momentum. He then grasped the handle of the cane with his left. 

“Do you really think you can beat me? Even with a sword, you hunchbacked nobody?” sneered Moriarty.

Richard grinned savagely around the slender rod held tight between his jaws. He twisted the handle and, at the click, opened his mouth. With a sudden flick, he sent the cane’s carapace rattling to the floor and held to the slender rapier that remained in his good hand. 

“Tis no shortsword,” Richard declared, looking along the narrow length of tempered steel, “Yet this dainty blade will suffice for my purpose. Release us, and surrender.”

Moriarty's expression could not have been more delighted. "You're a lot more fun than you look," he said, and struck.

The blackguard was fast and not untutored, but for all Richard’s current self was no swordsman, he was agile and attuned to battle. Blended with the domination of his former mind and his muscle memory, the strike was easy parried. Richard carried the block through in an arc, while the scrape of steel rang throughout the decrepit hall, and swept the blade in a new downward arc. Moriarty's blade clashed briefly with Richard’s as he leapt away.

Richard chased after, a sturdy advance with a powerful blow, and again, pushing his enemy back pace and pace again, but then a parry turned on the slide to a sweeping, slicing motion towards not Richard but captured Mycroft. The brother flinched away, the tip of the rapier whistling heart-stopping close by his eye.

Richard, roaring battlefield rage, crashed his body into Moriarty's, forcing him away from the captive and from Khan. His Khan who had pushed himself to hands and knees and who struggled to rise on his hurting, wounded leg.

Richard did not waste breath on threats, but attacked with force. Yet he was correct – a rapier was not his weapon, and the laughing madman spun away from a blow too heavy-weilded for such close quarters.

Moriarty dashed dancingly towards the brothers and flicked his blade against the kneeling man's arm, drawing blood from a tiny nick. Moran cheered.

The kneeling warrior smiled slow and cold.

Richard, not roaring now but silent as the hushed herald of a striking snake, cut a stripe across the villain's cheek for daring to draw beloved blood, and it would have been a killing blow too, but that the villain had drawn away in time.

Moriarty whirled and with no words spoken further, he and Richard set to clashing rapiers in deadly earnest.

Seeing his mad lord thus under siege, Moran chose to risk Moriarty's wrath and joined the fray. He did no more than draw a dagger to hold at Sherlock's throat and shout, "Watch him die, you prick!" to distract the battling prince.

In that moment's lapse, Moriarty crowded close to, inside the long reach of Richard’s sword, but with his own pressed to Richard's throat as Richard was pressed inescapably to the wall.

Khan in Sherlock's body knew with both his sharp intellects that Moran had no intention to kill him. Moriarty would never forgive the trespass of a pleasure he considered rightfully his own. So, fearing not for himself, but so greatly for Richard, he rose up to his feet, calling as he did:

"Richard! _Your arm is not crippled in this life_!"

And, not waiting to see if he was heard and understood, as he rose he powered his fist through the space already occupied by Seb Moran's chin. The blow connected and Moran's head snapped back at the force of it, blood flying in a scarlet arc from his mouth where his teeth had cut and rattled loose within.

And by the wall, blade to his throat, Richard, duke and king and warrior, remembered that he was John as well as Richard, and drove the curled fist of his right hand sudden up into the soft hollow beneath the hinge of his enemy's jaw.

Choking, Moriarty drew away, but his eyes were wild now, and he flung himself savagely again at Richard, who parried and struck but could not make the villain yield.

Khan dealt the dazed Moran another blow, and easily avoided a vicious stab of the knife with the merest and most elegant sway of his body out of the weapon's path. He caught sight of his swordstick's sheath and leapt for it, an acrobatic dive full of economic grace. He rose nimbly, favouring his injured leg, so badly broken in that fall. Then, his grin still slow and cold and full of deadly promise, he limped towards Moran.

"Come on, then" he said, "show me your might, little human."

Moran, with the calculation of a cobra, struck at him with the short blade. And Khan, cunning as a mongoose, swayed aside again, letting the knife cut empty air, and struck Moran across the nose with the wooden sheath. Blood poured from the broken gristle of it, but before Moran could recover his fighting stance, the sheath slashed down again across his cheek, breaking it, then a third time, across his chest, and the snap of Moran’s collarbone rang out.

Finally, with balletic grace, Khan swept behind the howling, bleeding killer and pinned Moran's back against his chest by virtue of the hard wooden swordstick's sheath across Moran's body, one end pulling on shoulder and throat, the other on broken clavicle and upper arm.

“Surrender, Moriarty, and I’ll spare your devoted wretch!” Khan’s voice boomed out, over the singing clash of blades.

And with no more thought than it took to aim the blow, Moriarty ‘s sword arm swept out and the end of his blade opened the throat of his loyal Seb, through skin and tendon and organ and artery, right to left. Moran had no time to voice a protest before he had no throat to protest with, and blood sprayed and then pulsed and then spumed a froth from the gaping wound, soaking his body and the floor; staining Khan’s face and chest; splashing upon oblivious Moriarty, already returned to his deadly battle with Richard.

Khan let the body fall, ready to do whatever he must in Richard’s defence – but his Richard had the best of it now, in that fight. He had adjusted to the reach and weight of the weapon. Further, as he remembered how to use a limb that had never moved for him, he absorbed lessons from his John-self, who had recently sparred with Sherlock, learning the art of fencing while Sherlock, leaning on tables and banisters and laughing, held his ground. Yet he had taken on the art of it, being naturally agile, and that practice married with Richard’s past created alchemy for victory.

And so Richard, with relentless strength and courage, met Moriarty’s sword, experience holding out against technique, and then rising above, for Moriarty was vicious, but Richard was hardened and had fought to exhaustion and beyond in campaigns on the muddy fields defending against more than one opponent.

With a lunge, a twist of the wrist and of the body, Richard’s sword sparked the length of Moriarty’s rapier, turning at the same time. At the completion of the manoeuvre, his opponent’s sword had spun away and the madman was left, clutching a bleeding hand and snarling defiance through his bleeding face at the man who held the point of a blade to his throat.

“My prince,” said Khan, voice deep and thrumming with approval, “I am indeed privileged to see you in action. What a swordsman you are.”

Richard’s keen eyes were bright with devilish amusement. “Aye, but I have delighted you with my swordplay before.”

Khan, laughing low, stepped up close behind his prince, keeping clear of the sword at their enemy’s throat, and brushed Richard’s neck with his lips, and then his teeth. “That you have, my Gloucester, and will do so again before the day is done.”

Richard smirked, and Moriarty thought to take advantage of their distraction and escape, but they were less distracted than he hoped, and Richard pressed the tip of the blade against Moriarty’s skin, pricking forth a bead of ruby blood.

Moriarty lifted his chin, as though welcoming the cut, but addressed his words to Khan. “Seriously, do you two _have_ to? Come on, Sherlock, or whoever you are, are you going to leave your _lackey_ to finish the job?”

Khan left off his admiring of Richard – his sweat-sheened body and strong hand holding to the hilt of the sword like it was an extension of his own self, blue eyes bright with his triumph – to sneer at the toothless taunt.

“You think this, my _prince_ , is my _underling_? Richard is my equal in all things. When you threaten one, you threaten both. When you fight one, you fight us _both_. My love’s hand is as my own. There is no distinction between blade and hilt for we share those offices one for the other. We know the worst of each other - the very hell-damned worst – and our love is undiminished and unconditional. We are united against all. You fought my prince and thus fought the best of me. And were bested.” His pride in his Richard, and his contempt for Moriarty, could not have been more clear.

Moriarty, for his part, could not stop staring at Khan/Sherlock in disbelief. “Who _are_ you?”

“Your sworn enemy,” said Richard, “And thy betters.”

Khan beamed at Richard, and Richard beamed back, the blood spattered on their faces and bodies a gory decoration for their satisfaction in one another.

Moriarty tried again to move, snatching now behind him at a weapon he’d held concealed in the band at the back of his jeans, but Richard was no fool, nor Khan as heedless of the danger as he appeared. The gun was drawn, but Khan punched Moriarty in the side of the face, and Richard’s blade slid into Moriarty’s hand, like a knife through butter.

Moriarty shrieked once and then stood gasping, back to the crumbling wall, staring at his hand transfixed into the rotted stone by six inches of excellent steel.

“Desist,” said Khan, “We are weary of your base machinations. You have lost. Accept your defeat.”

“I’d rather die,” snarled Moriarty.

Richard looked upon him with scorn and disgust. “If you are so entirely in love with death then die,” he said, “But not by my hand. I will not, as Richmond did for Richard, aid you to quit the hell in which you live and help you to a merciful death. I have learned to forsake cruelty but do not mistake me for a merciful man, when you thus threaten the star of my life. If ‘tis mercy that you should die, then live, and curse my name, which will be music unto me. If ‘tis mercy you should live, why then, do not look to me to murder thee. I hate thee, but will not once more turn my hand to tyranny. For defence of my love or my self, I will kill thee. But not for rage or spite. It is agreed.”

He looked to Khan, who, blood smeared though he was, gazed upon Richard with gentle adoration.

“Aye, my love, ‘tis agreed.” He looked upon Moriarty with no more kindness than Richard had shown. “Once I would have crushed your skull in my bare hands. You would not have been the first. But as these new hands do not have that strength, so this soul no longer has the stomach for the butchery. You will not die by my hand, either. You may have my pity instead, if you can bear it. Perhaps your next life will bring you closer to contentment, or at least a step away from madness.”

“My next life? I’m right then. Who you are… used to be… You’re not Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. You’re who they were in another life.”

“We are reformed madmen, who have taken thousands of long and painful steps from our former delirium,” said Khan, “But you, Moriarty, are still mad.”

Moriarty nodded, as though it was finally an explanation he could comprehend. “Yes,” he said, “It’s a problem. Perhaps the final problem.”

“What,” rasped a forgotten voice from across the room, “The hell is going on?”

Khan turned towards the man still tied to the invasive tree, face wan, speckled in blood from Moran’s murder. “I know you,” he said, puzzled.

“For god’s sake, Sherlock,” said the man.

“’Tis your brother,” offered Richard, “A dry and sneaking fellow. In my court, he would have been mine enemy and dead in a week, or mine ally and dead in a year. As he stands, I… John… we find him overbearing and oft-times amusing.”

Khan tilted his head. “He is kin to me now, but one day he will be reborn as my maker, I think. He who made me and my siblings, and the first to betray us by that making. But that is not for hundreds of years, yet. _This_ man does not know his fate, nor mine.” Khan blinked slowly, as though a voice in his mind was clamouring to be heard. “I… we…” His smile was lopsided. “The Sherlock I am does not care for the inferences of this day.”

Richard frowned for other reasons. “How is your hurt?” he asked, raising his right hand to examine the cut on Khan’s arm.

“Tis well,” said Khan, and he placed a hand over Richard’s fingers. “How is your hand?” He raised it to his lips, and kissed the knuckles.

“Why, tis a little more useful than usual,” Richard laughed, “Though that little was enough.”

Behind them came a sudden cry from the neglected prisoner, and they turned to defend, but what they saw was Moriarty pushing his own hand down the blade embedded in his palm, the tip still affixed to the wall.

“Halt!” cried Richard in alarm.

Moriarty only grinned at him, a mad-eyed, glinting joy in it, and screamed while grinning, as he pushed hard, leaving bloody trails upon the steel, until seconds later his hand came wrongsided to the hilt.

Khan and Richard together stepped towards him, not knowing what he planned, but his scheme became almost instantly clear when, laughing still, grimacing still, their enemy leant his weight to the weapon to wrench it from the wall. He staggered away from them, stretching his arm out before him, dripping blood on hilt and floor. Yet he did not attack, but instead stretched back his own neck and guided the gory blade with his free hand until the point was at his throat.

“Reincarnation, eh?” the madman laughed, “All right then. Better luck next life.”

And then he fell on the point, and it slid through his throat and neck – like a knife through butter.

Richard and Khan stared, aghast, as did the brother behind them, less at the blood and the wound than at that smile, full of joy and relief, and at the satisfied sound as he sighed out blood and breath and life.

“Well then,” observed Khan drily, “That is his final problem solved. Perhaps we meet in another life. I do not recall it.”

“Perhaps Fate manifested him here, as a great test to remind us of what we chose to leave behind,” said Richard darkly.

“Fate may be cruel enough for that,” said Khan, “And yet kind enough to allow us the choice.”

“We remain steadfast,” Richard said, taking Khan’s hand, “And thus together.”

“Yes, my prince. Together yet.” Khan smiled, and for all the blood smeared upon his skin and clothes, when he bent to kiss his beardless Richard, Richard’s gold-flecked blue eyes only shone as he offered up his mouth, and the two soft-kiss’d a moment.

“The drug administered by the damned Moran wears thin,” Khan murmured against Richard’s lips, “My newer self awakes.”

“And so stirs too that nobler self I am become.”

“Say not nobler, beloved, only wiser.”

“I am wise enough to know I love thee whatever name you wear.” Richard reached to run his fingers over Khan’s face. “Tis joy to touch you in this waking world, my love.” He fingered the lush curls that framed his Khan’s face and smiled teasingly. “Even thus prettily endowed with curling locks.”

Khan laughed and touched reverent fingers to Richard’s own bare cheek. “And you, all clean-skinned like a boy. I would miss your beard in this life, my Richard, for I like how it tickles my fingers and my cheek, and in all my secret places.”

Their bawdy laughter at that observation was swallowed in kisses turned harder and then biting and then gentled again, soft endearments spoken skin to skin.

“We come awake, and thus we sleep once more,” murmured Khan.

“And wake or sleep, we will love again through dreaming’s door,” Richard replied.

They closed their eyes and, holding hands, their bodies swayed a little. For a moment, the minds that were and the minds that they became co-dwelt in the upper consciousness of each single soul. And then the waves of thought, of past and present self, resolved into John and into Sherlock. 

But this time, echoes of memory remained, of what had happened in this room, and who they had been while those events unfolded.

Sherlock could see over John’s shoulder, and to his left, to the bloodied bodies of Moran and Moriarty, throats cut, but not by John or Sherlock (or those other selves). 

Sherlock looked to John. “Who _were_ we?

“It matters not...” John grimaced and shook his head to clear it. “It doesn't matter. That’s not important.”

“What is important, then?” 

“Who we are now. Who we have become.”

Sherlock scowled. “I don't believe in reincarnation.” 

John shrugged. “Nor do I. But apparently it believes in us.”

“ _Reincarnation?_ ” The once-again forgotten third voice broke in on their exchange. Mycroft, still tied to the tree, was full of offended logic. “I think you’ll find, Dr Watson, that you were hallucinating that you were King Richard the Third of England.”

John blinked at him. “What? You think I’m too common for royalty?”

Sherlock had seized John’s hand and was glaring at his brother. “You’ve witnessed all this and that’s all you can say?” Then he frowned. “And who do you think _I_ thought Iwas?”

“Some common brute of a soldier, apparently,” sneered Mycroft.

“Not common, love,” said John, squeezing Sherlock’s hand, “Far from common.” And Sherlock’s haughty response to his brother dissipated, because after all, Mycroft’s opinion didn’t count as much as John’s did, and more, he did not want to say that he knew his other self had been bred to be a perfect and perfectly inhuman man. It sounded too much like a Baskerville experiment. He didn’t want Mycroft getting _ideas_.

“You were both out of your heads on some drug,” asserted Mycroft, “Which I will certainly have investigated _once you untie me from this tree_.”

Sherlock’s expression indicated that he thought both tree and Mycroft were enhanced by being roped together, but John found the lost rapier ( _had he really disarmed Moriarty in a sword fight?_ ) to cut the bindings.

Sherlock limped over to the sheath of his cane and cast a rueful glance towards his own rapier, buried in Moriarty’s neck and hand.

“Oh, take it,” Mycroft waved impatiently at the gruesome scene, retrieving his blade and the sheath and reassembling it into his umbrella, “You hardly think I’ll allow this to be a _crime scene_ , do you?”

Sherlock tipped Moriarty’s body onto its back and considered the problem. He couldn’t stop staring at Moriarty’s happy, gory face.

“ _Nothing became him in his life like the leaving of it_ , wouldn’t you say?” said Mycroft with a sardonic lift of the eyebrow.

John elbowed past him, gently pushed Sherlock out of the way, planted a foot on Moriarty’s thigh and tugged the sword free. He cleaned the blood off it with his own stripped-off shirt, all else being too soaked in blood to be much use, and clipped the walking stick back together. “Here,” he said, placing it firmly into Sherlock’s hand, “You need that.”

Sherlock blinked his way out of his troubled introspection and grasped the cane, because he did need it. His bad leg was trembling and he seemed in imminent danger of collapsing on it. He would be able to do without it eventually, his doctors said (both the orthopaedic surgeon in charge of his recovery and the one he actually trusted, here at his side) but this day’s strain had been unusual and debilitating.

He continued to blink slightly as John took the clean side of his shirt to wipe across his face.

“I’m all right,” Sherlock said.

“I know,” said John, but he continued to clean Sherlock’s face of blood that wasn’t his.

Sherlock’s gaze dropped to John’s bare chest, at his skin goose-bumping with the cold, at the scar on his shoulder. He dropped his head to kiss the indentation, then rested his forehead on John’s shoulder. John dropped the shirt and wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s shoulders and held him there.

“Prince of my heart,” Sherlock murmured.

“As you are sovereign of my own,” John said softly.

Several minutes later, Mycroft returned – they hadn’t seen him leave – with news that a mop-up team was on the way and would take them home.

*

At home in Baker Street, John filled the tub with hot water and foaming bubbles and bathed Sherlock. It was supposed to end there, but Sherlock pulled John in with him and John, laughingly protesting that “I’ve still got my pants on!” was assisted with getting rid of that little problem. The resulting employment of water, soap and friction led to mutual orgasms and then a pretty puzzle in how to extract themselves from the tub without injuring Sherlock or, indeed, John, but they solved it, of course.

Later, wrapped up in each other’s arms, their other selves met in the dreamworld. They bathed too, in their brook, in their glade, and then the king-that-was nuzzled his love-hungry mouth into the secret places of the warrior-to-be, to tickle him with his beard and tongue. In time, they turned, Khan lying naked on the grass, his Richard moving with rolling hips astride him. Khan suckled upon the atrophied yet receptive fingers of his prince’s right hand, while Richard’s left curled in a lovingly rough fist to tug on Khan’s now-straight hair. Khan’s own hand, curled around Richard’s prick, kept rhythm with his moving hips, and in their glade they cried out in lusty joy as they came.

In that bed in Baker Street, clinging together, legs and arms tangled, belly to belly, mouth to drowsy mouth, cocks aligned and frotting, asleep yet not, and still not yet awake, their naked bodies sought each other and as in the dream, they climaxed and sighed and melted into sated, pleasured bliss, and slept again.

*

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure:
> 
> He who the sword of heaven will bear  
> Should be as holy as severe;  
> Pattern in himself to know,  
> Grace to stand, and virtue go;  
> More nor less to others paying  
> Than by self-offences weighing.  
> Shame to him whose cruel striking  
> Kills for faults of his own liking!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Sword of Heaven](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616556) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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